Anthony “Tony” Zummo is a man of faith.
It was that faith – and his last name – that he believes saved his life while he served his country as an Army soldier during the Korean War.
“I had just received a letter from my mother saying that she and my dad were going to make a Novena for my safety about the time the Chinese had overrun a service compound and killed a lot of its truck drivers,” said Zummo, a 79-year-old San Antonio Heights resident. “They bayoneted them in their sleeping bags. The commander came over to where we were and said they needed four truck drivers, our lieutenant said pick four guys from the roster and he took: Zonder, Zasso, Zulianie and Zummo – the last four names on the roster.”
of the guys were sent to the front lines, directly in harm’s way.
“My parents’ Novena worked,” he said. “I believe in the power of prayer.”
A Novena, traditionally associated with Italian Catholics, is a devotion consisting of prayers said on nine consecutive days, usually for a special intention.
However, Zummo’s assignment as a truck driver for the Army Grave Registration Office pulled at the heart of the sensitive soldier born in Lincoln Heights.
Zummo was 21 when he and his whole Southern California neighborhood was drafted. Together they were sent to Fort Ord for basic training before being shipped to Korea on the USS Thomas Jefferson.
“They gave us each a life vest to put on, they were so dirty and smelled so bad,” he said. “We slept in the bottom of the ship on bunks five high with about 12 inches between each bunk. Guys had a hard time getting to their bunks and if the top guy got sick and threw up we all got a piece of it. It smelled so bad. A lot of guys slept on deck to get away from the smell.”
They docked in the beautiful port of Yokohama, Japan, amidst lush green islands rich with palm trees. Each man was given two duffle bags filled with clothes, boots and gear to be transported to the troops.
“They used us as donkeys,” he laughed.
The men were put on trains to a Japanese airport, then boarded DC4 planes to Korea.
“We had no fighter plane escort, no parachute, no nothing,” he said. “Then when we got to Korea we couldn’t even land. MIGs had strafed the airport. We looked down and all we saw was burning and I started to ask myself, `What am I doing here?”‘
Zummo and the rest of the 35th Infantry Regiment, “The Cacti,” were stationed at the Repo Depo, where soldiers went until they were needed at the front lines – so close they could hear the gunfire.
All the other guys from Zummo’s neighborhood eventually were sent to the front lines. Zummo, as a truck driver, was sent to the Headquarters Service Compound, 10 miles from the fighting.
“We were right next to the Army post office, so in the morning we’d drive to get the mail and in the afternoon we’d pick up dead bodies,” he said.
Zummo remembers his first pickup.
“We went out into the rice paddy and found this red-headed American face down,” he said. “His hand was closed in a fist. We turned him over and found rice growing out of his hand.”
Zummo quickly learned why each man wore two dog tags and why they had notches.
“One was to mail back to the family with each man’s belongings,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “The other stayed with the body, that notch was fit between the soldier’s two front teeth so they were easily identified. That was because when a body was put in a body bag and the Red Cross came through to try and find someone they only had to unzip it a short way to find out who it was.”
Among other atrocities of war, Zummo picked up many fallen soldiers who had been mutilated after death.
“The Chinese would cut off their ears and put them on a string as souvenirs,” he said.
But what still hunts Zummo are the memories of picking up the bodies of the guys he grew up with.
“That was so tough,” he said quietly.
Zummo went on to say that the Chinese taught monkeys to throw hand grenades.
“Not ones big enough to kill you, but ones big enough to blind you or hurt you pretty bad,” he said. “They were about the size of cherry bombs and the monkeys could hold them in their hands. The monkeys’ would come scampering across the line and a guy would see one of them and call him over and – boom!”
Zummo was in Korea two years and the shooting never stopped. He received several medals including two Bronze Stars.
When he came home he married the girl next door. He and Francesca have been married 51 years, raised three children and have seven grandchildren.
Zummo had worked at Sears before the war and after his service worked there for another 40 years. He also earned a master’s degree in sociology and a bachelor’s in American humanics from Cal State Los Angeles.
He was a Big Brother and, after Sears, worked for the Boys and Girls Club, then the Pasadena YMCA. He’s currently on staff at the Upland YMCA.
Zummo has spent his life helping others, many of them children, wanting to give of himself to the people of the country he loves.
He’s also the historian of American Legion Post 247 in Arcadia, making sure the service of his comrades in arms is remembered and respected. However, the reasons for being in Korea are still unclear to him.
“We went over there to stop communism – it wasn’t supposed to be war, it was supposed to be a peace mission,” he said. “Did it do any good for the world? I just don’t know. North and South Korea are still fighting each other. Had we solidified the county maybe it would have been worth it. As it is, it was a waste of young life.”